Zombie faces: Why are we afraid of them?
Psychological studies have established that we fear zombies due to the fact that they closely resemble humans. Alongside clowns and dolls, the hyper-realistic corpses unnerve people because they look like people with glossed over and vacant eyes and damaged or disproportionate bodies. The concept that zombies are the risen dead reinforces our fear of them as they would once have been walking among us every day, this also instils the fear that close friends and family could one day rise as the undead. Additionally zombie films are frequently set in suburban environments which fractures the audience's sense of security as they are watching a familiar setting becoming hazardous.
Why Do People Love the Zombie Apocalypse?
Nuclear apocalypse, pandemics and the rapture are end of the world scenarios almost impossible to live through. The thrill that comes with wondering if you would survive the zombie apocalypse has entertained audiences since the creation of White Zombie (Victor Halperin) in 1936. Zombie apocalypse plots usually have rather dim characters to convince viewers that they could survive it, this creates an interest in the genre which opens up the opportunity for sequels and spin offs e.g. Dead Snow (Wirkola, 2009). Additionally the reason behind zombies being portrayed as unintelligent is to reassure the audience that it is as survivable situation.
Why do we love zombies?
Reasons we love the zombies in our favourite horror films:
- They can never kill our favourite characters
- The zombie formula has been borrowed from literature like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, it is a tried and tested genre.
- We have learned to love warfare and therefore love the unfair fight between the zombies and the remainder of the human population.
- They are a metaphor for technology - consuming and controlling us.
- We enjoy knowing that we are safe afterwards
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